


Home Is Where You Hang Your Temporal Paradox

by capalxii



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4828574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capalxii/pseuds/capalxii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A UNIT scientist accidentally yanks Danny out of the Nethersphere some decades in the future. Then it gets weird. Mostly Danny alone, with Danny/OMC, Danny/Clara and Twelve/Clara touched on at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Is Where You Hang Your Temporal Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a really cockamamie theory that Orson was actually Danny all along, just a Danny who'd been brought back to life in the future & was trying to get back to his "real" time.
> 
> I do realize I'm writing this for a small group of people; both pairings were tagged so you can avoid the fic if you dislike one or the other.

Now, Jacob Singh prided himself on a number of things. Most of them were not relevant to the events he was about to set into motion, such as the eggplant parm recipe that he'd learned from an ex and greatly improved upon, or his innate ability to make any cat, anywhere in the world, love him, or his perfect memory for any holo-vision show he'd ever seen (and maybe a few he hadn't). 

But one of the things he prided himself on was his ability not to panic under duress. Jacob was a cool, collected man. He was the guy who others came to when they themselves were in a panic. Steady Eddy is what they'd call him, if his name weren't Jacob. No drama, no flailing. Unblinking solidness was his personal brand.

So it came as a surprise to everyone, himself included, when he stared, blinked, yelped, and jumped back from the man who'd suddenly appeared before him. 

The man stared, blinked, yelped, and attempted to jump back as well. 

To his credit, Jacob throttled back the instinct to blink, yelp, and jump for a second time, and instead stuttered, “Who—how—where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

“This is-” The man furrowed his brow. Tall dark and handsome, Jacob soon realized, didn't begin to cover it. He was gentle looking but with an air about him that said he could do you great harm once he was done napping on your sofa. Well dressed too, if a touch retro. “This place is different.”

“This place is the same.” Jacob glanced around quickly and looked for something he could use as a weapon. It was late, all the other technicians long gone home, and Jacob had only been working on a little side project of his, trying to tinker with an old extraterrestrial hard drive during his off hours. Nothing seemed appropriately dangerous, so he grabbed a computer keyboard and hoped for the best.

“That keyboard,” the man said. “It's one of those floppy silicone deals, isn't it? The kinds you can just sort of roll up?”

“Yeah,” Jacob said. He wiggled it threateningly. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The man bit his lip, cringed, sighed and rolled his eyes, as though he'd expected all this without really wanting it. “My name's Danny Pink. I think I'm meant to be dead.”

“Well,” Jacob said, “you bloody well aren't.”

*

UNIT hadn't changed too much in a century. The odd technological advances here and there, yes, above and beyond the rest of humanity, but bureaucracies are bureaucracies, and Dr. Singh was but a cog in the great machine. His side project wasn't meant to exist, even in the “this doesn't officially exist” world of poorly kept government secrets, and so he was stuck in the rather awkward position of needing to report to his superiors that he'd brought someone back from the dead without actually reporting how. 

“I'm not sure how to word this,” he said. The floppy keyboard had been re-attached to a computer, and Mr. Pink was seated behind him, eating an apple like he hadn't eaten in years.

Technically, he hadn't. Dr. Singh tried to ignore that.

“Shove a bunch of jargon in it,” Mr. Pink said. “You still have jargon in the future?”

“We have even more jargon now than you had in your time,” Dr. Singh said. “A whole galaxy of jargon.”

“Well,” Mr. Pink said.

“Well what?”

“Well shove a galaxy of jargon into it. Or, you know, you could just be honest.”

“Tell them I woke the dead by playing around with a relic from an old Cyberman invasion? I think that might not be the best thing for either of us.”

Mr. Pink chewed thoughtfully. “Hang on.”

“What?”

“You got any peanut butter? Think I could do with some protein.”

*

Danny, as he preferred to be called, was fairly good at bullshitting government reports, and once he'd been properly fed he had been quick to offer to help Jacob fill out his paperwork. Jacob, not being so great at bullshitting, had offered his chair and moved out of Danny's way. “Used to be a teacher,” Danny said, by way of explanation. “And—well, used to be a teacher.”

Jacob nodded and leaned close to Danny, trying not to be too creepy as he read over his shoulder. “It's funny, some of what you're writing sounds a bit military.”

Danny pecked away at the keyboard and remained quiet. “Maths teacher,” he finally said. “At Coal Hill.”

“Coal Hill?” Jacob said in surprise. “Don't think it exists anymore, but my great-grandmother used to go there.”

“Yeah?” Danny said, though he sounded distracted as he filled out the forms. “When was that?”

“Early twenty-first century.”

Danny stopped typing, cocked an eyebrow up, and turned to look at him. “Yeah?”

*

Turned out century old educator-and-military jargon provided just enough cover. With no way to tell the general public what had happened, and with no way to make it un-happen without someone discovering morals and spilling to the press, UNIT was forced to give Danny a new life in every sense of the word. A new background, a new flat, a crash course in history, and a new name. 

Orson. Wasn't his first choice. Wasn't any of his choices. Danny was fairly sure he'd been saddled with the name out of pure spite. 

Danny, now Orson, took the name anyway, walked from UNIT HQ to his new flat—London was still London in the future, at least—and climbed the stairs for a bit before taking the lift the rest of the way up. The future still had flats, stairs, lifts.

The future, Danny decided, was boring.

No, it was more than that. He pulled back the curtains from the very nice windows in his very nice flat, and looked out at the city. His city, to be sure, with many of the same buildings even, certainly the same streets. With no flying cars, no strange machines taking up the sky, it looked very similar to the London he'd died in. And he wasn't the kind of man to be disheartened by that; if anything, it should have been something of a comfort, that he'd have very little to adjust to.

The future wasn't boring to Danny Pink. It just wasn't his. 

Still, he was stuck with it, stuck with a new name and a new life and even a new flatmate in Jacob to help him get back in the swing of things, and he was grateful for the chance to have more time on earth—it was just he wondered what the point of it was, to live in a place without a single connection. What were a person's memories if nobody who was in them no longer existed, he asked himself. What was a person's life without the other people who built that life? 

The door opened with a gentle swooshing sound. At least there was that, he thought. Very Star Trek. No flying cars, but the doors were all automatic. Jacob had gotten a new home too, on account of being the one who had brought Danny back. “Brought some takeaway,” he said, holding up a big paper bag.

At least the future still had takeaway.

*  
“Thing is, there's a project.”

It had been two weeks. Danny had tried to do a few things in that time, had certainly gotten used to people calling him his new name instead of his own name, but just about the only thing that made him even vaguely happy was running. He hadn't wanted to think too hard about that. He hadn't wanted to think too hard about very much. So he shifted in his chair, a little bit anxious to get back to the book of crosswords he'd gotten after his morning run, and asked Jacob, “What kind of project?”

“A really dangerous one but it's very cool,” Jacob said. He smiled, enthusiastic and hopeful. “Man like you, saving the whole world like you did, I'm sure it's right up your alley.”

Danny hadn't had the heart to tell him he'd died crossing the road. Somehow, that jot of information had never made it into UNIT records, and the only things they'd known about him were the things Clara had told them and Clara—it had warmed his heart, the things she'd said. The way she'd said it. She'd written her statement by hand, big looping cursive that he could barely read, and they'd kept the scan of it along with a photo of her. She'd told them about the invasion plans, the way he'd stopped the rain, the boy he'd sent back and UNIT had helped get that boy to his family. She'd left a token representing him to go along with her story—it was a fairy tale, he'd had to smile as he'd read it, a fable about a soldier who hadn't needed a gun to save the whole world—and they'd let him have the little plastic figurine she'd put in a box and saved. It had been his to begin with, after all.

But she hadn't told them, wouldn't have thought to tell them, that he was just a normal man, no need for any more adventure than what he'd already had in his life. “I don't really do danger,” he said.

Jacob kept smiling, but it was a confused smile. “You don't do danger? Come on, Orson. Don't give me that.” He punched Danny lightly on the shoulder. “Guy like you lives for danger. Trust me mate, it's obvious and it's a good look.”

“Thanks but I really don't,” he said. He'd normally be half done with his crossword book by now. He was running out of crossword books at the news stand. 

The smile finally fell from Jacob's face. “Really? I thought—I mean, you were an associate of the Doctor.”

Danny's own smile was a tight one. “Sort of. What's that got to do with anything?”

“The project. It's, um. First human time travel.”

Huh.

*

The future wasn't Danny's. But throwing himself into training was enough to make him forget that for a bit. The future had nice enough people, even if they did look at him like some kind of outsider—which he was—and even if he was only actively participating in this project to get away from them—which, again, he was. It was tough training but nothing he hadn't done before, at least not physically, and the technical school was nothing he couldn't do.

“P.E., isn't that right,” he muttered to himself one night after a particularly rough day. “Like to see you do this, you Mister Burns-looking son of a bitch.”

Only thing was it took a few years. The mechanical development was mostly there, save for a tweak or two, but they were big tweaks. Danny didn't mind. A few years to see if he could travel in time, then a little escape to the past. They wouldn't have to know that part.

“You'll want us to build a timer on the controls, yeah?” Jacob asked one day. “So you can set lift-off a few minutes after you've left the machine, send it back without you after you get back home?”

Danny winced, nodded, and reassessed. _Most_ of them wouldn't have to know that part.

*

There were actual parades. That was the strangest part. He wasn't too used to parades, at least not being in the center of them. A nice big send-off for a man who technically didn't exist until a few years prior. He'd gone a little prematurely gray in that time, looking a little more distinguished than he actually felt.

Then there was the trip itself, and that's where it all went wrong.

End of the universe wasn't exactly what he'd been aiming for. End of the universe was a bit terrifying. End of the universe meant he'd be dead—again—with nothing to really show for it and nobody around to find him. 

End of the universe, except some time into his accidental exile, he heard a familiar, annoying sound in the cargo bay. Then he saw a familiar, annoying face; preparing himself to scowl, he walked up to the Doctor and demanded, “What are you doing here?”

“Sorry to barge in, well, not really,” the Doctor said with a smile. It was an unknowing smile, and Danny's pre-scowl face softened. “Do you happen to know Clara Oswald? Short, round eyes, round face, generally lots of roundness, which, you know, I like round things but don't tell her because her ego would explode—do you know her?”

The Doctor shouldn't have had to ask him that. At least, not the Doctor who he knew. Danny frowned and realized this Doctor didn't know him yet, which meant he couldn't answer truthfully here. “No,” he said, shrugging. “Sorry, never heard of her.”

The Doctor's smile fell. “Not a family relation, maybe? What year is this?”

“No idea. According to my readouts, it's the end of time.”

“Yes, that's what mine said too,” the Doctor said glumly. Then his face brightened. “Oh! But you're a time traveler! Which means-”

The Doctor sprinted off to the control room, talking technical specs and mechanics and physics, and Danny made note of as much as possible. If he were going to get back home, he'd have to know what had gone wrong in the first place; that the Doctor was being helpful, and even in his own way trying to be kind, was not lost on him. Once the Doctor had finally stopped chattering, he asked, “Do you think you could fix it?”

“No, you've got too much damage,” he said. “But I can get you home, no problem. That is, if you could help me first.”

Typical, he thought. He'd die out here on this rock unless he did what the Doctor wanted him to do. Still, he summoned up a smile and nodded, eager to at least get back to some kind of civilization. “Anything you want.”

“Could you tell me why you keep the door locked?”

*

The knocking on the door must have been the wind, he'd told himself. That was all, but over the days he'd been trapped, that wind had started to sound more and more like a sentient thing. Which Danny knew didn't make sense, but since when did fears make sense? He'd told the Doctor it was nothing, the Doctor had agreed, yet somehow he'd ended up-

Well. He hadn't expected this. He'd barely even recalled this restaurant. But he knew the way she'd done her hair. He knew how she'd looked in the light. He remembered that dress, even to the end of time itself he would always remember that dress on her body. 

He was breaking up his own first date with the woman he loved. He never wanted to do time travel again, outside of what he would have to do to get back home. 

The whole thing was dizzying and he couldn't quite wrap his brain around it. He was too busy trying to play it cool, trying to pretend he had no idea who they were when in reality he'd remember that night forever. It was too early, he couldn't escape to this time, not before he died, definitely not before he and Clara had even begun. And so when he had to talk to her, he called himself Orson, panicked a bit, said something about a great grandparent, and gave her the little soldier.

It was only a few days later, once the Doctor had returned him to his future time, that he realized that maybe, perhaps, he might have accidentally implied to his girlfriend that he was her great grandson.

*

And then he realized she'd handed his soldier off to the Doctor, some thousands of years before the toy had even been manufactured, on a planet light years away from Earth.

*

And after that, he decided time travel really was not for him, and he'd only be taking one more trip. Ever.

*

There was, fortunately, a back-up machine. And more parades, with that back-up machine standing in for the real thing, because nobody wanted to admit that a different time traveler had had to get him home and the real machine was sitting on a planet at the end of time. 

Jacob, whose crush on Danny might have turned into a heated late-night fumble once or twice before sliding into a definite friends-with-benefits situation, had fitted that machine with the exact same timer as the original, and had taken all of Danny's notes from the Doctor's technical comments and had worked with the rest of the team to fix what needed to be fixed. Or so Danny hoped. 

“So,” Jacob said, the night before Danny's next flight. “Don't die. Or, you know. Anything.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “Um. Good looking out. Look me up in an encyclopedia. Or not, I probably won't be in one.”

“Right.” Jacob nodded. His eyes flashed brightly as he looked away, then back up at Danny. “Come back some time. Even if it's just for a weekend or something.”

He almost wanted to ask Jacob to come with him, but he'd seen Back to the Future as a kid and he knew the dangers of paradoxes. He knew the dangers of the heart, too; Jacob could no more exist in the past as Danny could in the future. “A weekend,” he said. “Yeah, could do.”

Jacob held out his hand and smiled the kind of smile that was meant to hold up crumbling walls. “Good luck.”

Danny just kissed him. What good was it to be friends with benefits if you couldn't use the benefits clause to show your friends what you really thought of them, he figured.

*

His second trip in his second machine worked out much better than the first. As soon as he saw a few newspapers, he ran back to the ship, set the timer, threw the lever to get it back to its proper time, and walked right back out into the gray, cold London afternoon. He had what he needed: fake documents, cash, a thumb drive containing an incredibly sneaky way to get his information into every system he needed to—a parting gift from Jacob—and a backpack full of clothes and gear.

It was 2018. Exactly the year he would've been in, had he lived in the right time and right order. He'd expected the feeling of being home, the flush of relief at familiar sights, sounds, smells, and faces, and he embraced it when it hit him.

What he hadn't expected was to see that stupid blue police box as he turned down an alley. He certainly hadn't expected to hear Clara's voice ringing out, echoing against the brick and pavement as she got nearer. He froze when he saw her.

She froze too. A look of disbelief, heartache, and then suspicion. She peered up at him, ready to run. “I don't—Orson?”

Danny took a deep breath, looked at her, the Doctor, and then back at her. “Not exactly. It's, um. Me. Danny.”

Alarm bells were going off in Clara's head. “Don't you dare.”

“I,” he began, taking a step back when the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver. Protective of Clara, at least, in a way Danny couldn't quite pin down but that he was somehow grateful for. “I can prove it. I can—but Clara, can I just say, it's really good to see you.”

Her eyes held a heavy, dangerous warning. “I mourned Danny Pink,” she said. 

He nodded, agreeing fast. “And I hope you moved on. I hope you've had a wonderful life, and that you'll keep having one. I didn't come back to disrupt you or your life, I wasn't even going to come looking, honest. But Clara. Clara, I gave you the toy soldier. The one without a gun.” The suspicion was slowly melting away from her face, and the Doctor's own suspicion was turning to shock as he scanned Danny, so he went on quickly. “In the time ship, I couldn't tell you it was me because you didn't know I was gone yet. You couldn't know, I'm sorry.”

“It's him,” the Doctor said to her. “He's not lying, it's truly him.”

Clara took a wavering step towards him, then another, eyes wide. Then she smacked his chest and scowled. “So you told me you were my great grandson?”

“It was an accident, I didn't know what else to say!”

“Could've just made something up,” she said. “I mean besides that.”

“Well,” he said, cringing slightly. “Couldn't think of anything else.” He looked down at his shoes then back up at her. She'd hardly changed; she was just as beautiful as he'd remembered, almost exactly the same. “You did move on, yeah? You've had a good life?”

“I did,” she said. She frowned, looking guilty. “I'm sorry.”

Silly Clara, he thought, smiling in surprise. “For what? It's a good thing. I'm happy to hear it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry to break this up,” the Doctor said. “But we were on our way to a book store.”

Danny nodded, then frowned. “Hang on, you're not wondering how I came back from the dead...in the future?”

The Doctor shrugged. “It happens. That's life when you're a time traveler.”

“I am not a time traveler,” he said sharply.

Clara traced her finger down his chest and smirked. “Think you're officially a time traveler, Mr. Pink.”

“Anyway, book store,” the Doctor said, pocketing his sonic. “Clara says it's for grown-ups. And it has novelties! Don't know what kind, she wouldn't tell-”

Clamping a hand over his mouth, Clara smiled tightly and glanced at Danny. “Uh.”

“...I'm. I'm happy to hear it.”

She winced. “Sorry. You didn't really need to find out like that.”

He took a deep breath, shook his head, and laughed. Sometimes your boyfriend's from the future, sometimes he's an alien with a complete lack of social skills but who would, for all his many flaws, never hurt the ones he loved. Sometimes he dies, comes back to life by accident, overshoots and travels to the end of the universe before running into you in an alley. Life when you're a time traveler, and Danny Pink was, through no fault of his own, a time traveler now. “No, really, it's fine. Clara, I'm glad.”

She smiled in relief. “Would you like to get coffee and catch up? Just the three of us?” she asked.

“That'd be good,” he said.

The Doctor peeled her hand away from his face. “So we're not going to the book store?”

Danny bit his lip, thought about it, and said, “I know another really good one, actually. It's a bit in the future. Could take you there one day.”

Clara looked at him with new-found admiration. “What happened to not being a time traveler?”

He shrugged and kissed her forehead. “Got a change of perspective, didn't I? And there's nothing wrong with a trip for a weekend, right?”

“It's going to take a whole weekend to get to this book store at this rate,” the Doctor said. 

She looped an arm through Danny's, then looped her other arm through the Doctor's before starting to walk. “Coffee first,” she said. “Got all the time in the universe for everything else.”

After it all, Danny found he couldn't help but agree.


End file.
